October 24, 2017, 12:59:55 PM

Nineteen Republican congressmen signed on to a letter sent out Friday requesting congressional hearings to keep special counsel Robert Mueller and his team of lawyers accountable.

"This team has sweeping authority and an open-ended mission, yet they are allowed to operate largely in secret, selected by and ultimately accountable to only one person: Mr. Mueller himself," the letter sent to House Judiciary Committee chairman Bob Goodlatte and Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley states.

"With numerous reports emerging almost every day on possible conflicts of interest and allegations of political bias, it would be in the interest of both the public and the Special Counsel team to speak to the American people through their elected representatives in Congress," the letter continues on to say. "Accordingly, we respectfully request that one of broth (sic) of the Judiciary Committees immediately convene a public and open hearing or series of hearings to bring Mr. Mueller and his team out of the shadows and into the public square."

Mueller's investigation has broad authority. He is authorized to investigate any coordination or links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign; charges such as perjury, obstruction of justice, intimidation of witnesses and destruction of evidence and any matters that "arose or may arise directly from the investigation."

i'd like to know that sessions has XX? arrest warrants on his desk,eric holder,hillary clinton wj clinton loretta lynch susan rice baraq obama,and joe biden,,muller comeymaybe also a few resignations from deep staters who assisted in spading over the evidence of corruption by the democrats. lord knows Trump has a full plate.russian acquiescence in the use by Assad of sarin gas,iranian heezbullah in syria, our fleet in the s pacific, tax cuts,the wall & every democrat obstruction they can come up with,sanctuary cities too .

Investigators looking into the so-called "Trump dossier" were not surprised when news broke Tuesday night that the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC, working through the Democrats' law firm, Perkins Coie, financed the "salacious and unverified" compilation of allegations of Trump collusion with Russia in the 2016 presidential campaign. (The "salacious and unverified" description comes from former FBI Director James Comey.)

There had been plenty of talk about the Democrats and Perkins Coie, so much that investigators almost assumed that was the case. But it wasn't until the Washington Post broke the story that it was confirmed.

And why did the story break when it did? Credit the much-maligned Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. The California Republican has been pursuing the dossier more aggressively than anyone else, and it was his Oct. 4 subpoena for the bank records of Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that handled the dossier, that finally shook loose the information.

But knowing that the Clinton campaign, the DNC, and Perkins Coie supported the dossier is not the end of the story. The most important next step is the FBI.

Sometime in October 2016 -- that is, at the height of the presidential campaign -- Christopher Steele, the foreign agent hired by Fusion GPS to compile the Trump dossier, approached the FBI with information he had gleaned during the project. According to a February report in the Washington Post, Steele "reached an agreement with the FBI a few weeks before the election for the bureau to pay him to continue his work."

It was an astonishing turn: the nation's top federal law enforcement agency agreeing to fund an ongoing opposition research project being conducted by one of the candidates in the midst of a presidential election. "The idea that the FBI and associates of the Clinton campaign would pay Mr. Steele to investigate the Republican nominee for president in the run-up to the election raises further questions about the FBI's independence from politics, as well as the Obama administration's use of law enforcement and intelligence agencies for political ends," wrote Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.

In the end, according to reports, the FBI did not pay Steele. But the dossier did not go away. Indeed, in January 2017, Comey briefed President-elect Trump (and President Obama) on the dossier's contents.

In recent months, Nunes has been trying to force the FBI to reveal just what it did in the dossier matter. The intel chairman issued a subpoena to the FBI on Aug. 24, and in the time since, not a single document has been produced to the committee. The FBI and the Justice Department have spent most of that time talking about possibly complying with this or that part of the subpoena. But so far -- nothing.

The same is true of Grassley's inquiries.

The new Clinton/DNC/Perkins Coie revelation will likely increase pressure on the FBI to explain what it did, and did not do, with the dossier. Certainly Nunes hopes that is the case. When I asked Nunes Tuesday night what would happen next with the FBI, he responded, "Their best option at this point is to bring all the documents tomorrow to the Capitol."

Two New York Times reporters are calling out people tied to Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee for denying the Clinton campaign and DNC's role in the making of the so-called "Trump dossier," following a report Tuesday that found they funded the research for the dossier.

According to the Washington Post report published Tuesday evening, Elias' law firm hired Fusion GPS, a Washington opposition research firm, to conduct research that resulted in the Trump dossier, which contained scandalous material tying President Trump to Russia.

"Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year," Maggie Haberman, White House correspondent for the New York Times tweeted.

Today the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) alleging the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign committee violated campaign finance law by failing to accurately disclose the purpose and recipient of payments for the dossier of research alleging connections between then-candidate Donald Trump and Russia. The CLC's complaint asserts that by effectively hiding these payments from public scrutiny the DNC and Clinton "undermined the vital public information role of campaign disclosures."

On October 24, The Washington Post revealed that the DNC and Hillary for America paid opposition research firm Fusion GPS to dig into Trump's Russia ties, but routed the money through the law firm Perkins Coie and described the purpose as "legal services" on their FEC reports rather than research. By law, campaign and party committees must disclose the reason money is spent and its recipient.

"By filing misleading reports, the DNC and Clinton campaign undermined the vital public information role of campaign disclosures," said Adav Noti, senior director, trial litigation and strategy at CLC, who previously served as the FEC's Associate General Counsel for Policy. "Voters need campaign disclosure laws to be enforced so they can hold candidates accountable for how they raise and spend money. The FEC must investigate this apparent violation and take appropriate action."

"Questions about who paid for this dossier are the subject of intense public interest, and this is precisely the information that FEC reports are supposed to provide," said Brendan Fischer, director, federal and FEC reform at CLC. "Payments by a campaign or party committee to an opposition research firm are legal, as long as those payments are accurately disclosed. But describing payments for opposition research as 'legal services' is entirely misleading and subverts the reporting requirements."

While details of the payment arrangements remain scarce, FEC records indicate that the Hillary campaign and the DNC paid a total of $12 million to Perkins Coie for "legal services." Marc Elias, a Perkins partner and general counsel for Hillary's campaign, then used some portion of those funds to turn around and hire Fusion GPS who then contracted with a former British spy, Christopher Steele, to compile the now-infamous dossier. Per the Daily Caller:

"He said he was motivated to contact us by the disgust he felt watching media coverage of the Russia story."

The Daily WireBy Ryan SaavedraOctober 29, 2017

Fox News host Tucker Carlson reported earlier this week that special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials has three people in its crosshairs.

Carlson revealed that a source who spoke to Fox News said that media reports that the investigation is centered around only Paul Manafort are not true:

The man, whose name we can't reveal for the time being, is a former senior employee of the Podesta Group. He said he was motivated to contact us by the disgust he felt watching media coverage of the Russia story. Not only were most reporters getting it wrong he said, they were getting it backward. The Russians were in fact deeply involved in American politics, but the real story had almost nothing to do with the 2016 presidential campaign.

The source told Fox News that Manafort is at the core of the investigation -- but only partly because of his connection to the Trump campaign. Instead, Manafort is under investigation because of his years working on behalf of Russian governent interests, on occasion with members of the Podesta Group, headed by John Podesta's brother, Tony.

Forgive yourself if you are confused about developments in the Russia, Russia, Russia storyline. In fact, there are so many moving parts that you shouldn't trust anybody who isn't confused.

Consider this, then, a guide to the perplexed, where we start with two things that are certain. First, special counsel Robert Mueller will never be able to untangle the tangled webs with any credibility and needs to step aside.

Mueller, whose office is apparently leaking the "secret" news that a grand jury has approved charges against an unidentified defendant, assumed his role with one big conflict, his relationship with his successor at the FBI, James Comey. That conflict has morphed into several more that are fixable only by resignation.

That became obvious last week when events showed that any honest probe must examine the Obama White House and Justice Department. Mueller served as head of the FBI for more than four years under President Obama and cannot be expected to investigate his former colleagues and bosses.

But without that necessary step, his work would be incomplete at best. So it's time for him to say ¬bye-bye.

The second thing we know for certain is that Hillary Clinton had a worse week than Mueller. Much worse.

The revelation that her campaign and the Democratic National Committee secretly funded the discredited dossier on Donald Trump's supposed connections to Russia rocked the political world. The Clinton connection, denied by the campaign for a year, throws more doubt on the entire Trump-Russia-collusion narrative and shows that Clinton worked with Russian officials to meddle in the election.

The Washington Post reported that her campaign and the DNC paid millions of dollars to a law firm, Perkins Coie, which hired a shadowy company called Fusion GPS, which hired a former British spy, Christopher Steele, to compile the dossier, much of which was said to be based on Kremlin sources.

The bombshell sent Clinton into hiding, and no wonder. She probably thought three degrees of separation from the dossier would be enough to insulate her. In her absence, her defenders offered a dog's stew of evasions, half-truths and diversionary attacks.

Their claim that nobody in the campaign or the DNC knew anything about the deal doesn't pass the smell test. When as much as $12 million goes out the window for a document that aimed to win the election -- and failed -- everybody knows something.

While the link to Clinton answers some questions, it raises others. For example, while it is certain her campaign spread the dossier among the media last summer, it remains uncertain whether the dossier was used by the White House and the FBI to justify snooping on the Trump campaign.

One hint that it was is that Comey, while still in office, called the document "salacious and unverified," but briefed Obama and President-elect Trump on its contents last January. And the FBI never denied reports that it almost hired Steele, the former British spy, to continue his work after the campaign.

The mystery might soon be solved because the FBI, after months of stonewalling, agreed last week to tell Congress how it used the dossier and detail its contacts with Steele.

House Oversight Committee chairman Trey Gowdy told Fox News's Chris Wallace that Special Counsel Robert Mueller should crack down on leaks from his office regarding grand jury deliberations.

A leak on Friday revealed that charges had been filed in connection with the Russian collusion investigation. Although at the time, no names were mentioned, we discovered today that former Trump campaign chief Robert Manafort and a close aide had been charged.

Quote"It is kind of ironic that the people in charge of investigating the law and executing the law would violate the law," Gowdy told host Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday." "Make no mistake, disclosing grand jury material is a violation of the law. So, as a former prosecutor, I'm disappointed that you and I are having the conversation because somebody violated their oath of secrecy."

"The only conversation I've had with Robert Mueller, it was stressing to him the importance of cutting out the leaks with respect to serious investigations," Gowdy said.

Still, the South Carolina Republican said he's not pushing for Mueller's investigation to be curtailed or shut down.

"I readily concede I'm in an increasingly small group of Republicans," Gowdy said. "Bob Mueller has a really distinguished career of service to our country. I don't think any of your viewers can think of a single thing he did as the FBI director that caused them to have a lack of confidence in him."

"He's a pretty apolitical guy," Gowdy added.

Does an "apolitical guy" manipulate the media by getting Washington in a tizzy for an entire weekend anticipating whom the grand jury has indicted? Mueller knew full well that the leak on Friday that promised an indictment without revealing who would be charged would create a sensation inside the Beltway. It did.

The leak was not only illegal. It violated the due process rights of the accused. But constitutional rights apparently pale in comparison to Mueller's media strategizing.

Mueller is forced to play the media game because he has nothing so far on the Trump campaign's collusion with Russia. He has indicted Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, on charges relating to activities before the two men even worked for Trump. His obvious ploy is to get one or both men to flip on other principals being investigated. Mueller may have something specific in mind, or he may simply be involved in a fishing expedition - shaking the tree to see if anything falls to the ground.

The special counsel's initial charges against Manafort and Gates aren't the 'smoking gun' of collusion many Dems had anticipated

PoliZetteby Kathryn BlackhurstUpdated 30 Oct 2017 at 12:22 PM

Conservative political commentator Pat Buchanan said Monday on "The Laura Ingraham Show" that the charges leveled against Paul Manafort and Rick Gates in special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe are "going to be something of a letdown" to Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans.

Buchanan, former communications director to President Ronald Reagan and two-time presidential candidate, noted that the charges President Donald Trump's two former campaign officials fielded don't provide the "smoking gun" evidence tying Trump's campaign to Russia's 2016 U.S. election interference for which many anti-Trump Americans had hoped.

"I thought the investigation was supposed to be about collusion between Trump and [Russian President] Putin. And what they have done is they have taken a campaign manager who was with Trump for three months and apparently gone back all the way to 2012 or 2010, 2011 and indicted him for income tax evasion and things like that," Buchanan said.

"So what it tells me is that after a year of investigation, or more than that by the FBI, and many, many months by Mr. Mueller, they haven't got it. They have not found the smoking gun ... on the collusion between Trump and Vladimir Putin," he added. "And so I think that, you know, I think this is going to be something of a letdown to these folks."

While the country responds to Mueller's first charges in the Russia probe, Buchanan also urged the U.S. to pay attention to the revelations that have been pouring in over the past couple of weeks tying the Democratic National Committee and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's campaign to the discredited dossier on Trump and Russia.

Buchanan told LifeZette Editor-in-Chief Laura Ingraham that the news revealing the Clinton campaign and the DNC helped fund the research that went into compiling the salacious allegations in the dossier should warrant significant attention from anyone who claims to be interested in and focused on Russia's election interference.